


Mut zur Tat

by porgdameron



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Additional Characters to be added, Adoption, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Public executions, Revolution, Slow Burn, this is a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-06 11:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13410030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porgdameron/pseuds/porgdameron
Summary: Finn, the adopted son of a rich and influential family, has never felt like he was part of the upperclass. He'd rather help the rebels, who are fighting for equality.Suddenly, he has a chance to join them.Poe Dameron, a rebel, meets a mysterious stranger in the streets of the city one night - a weird man he had heard so much about.He didn’t look like he was poor, but noblemen weren’t known for helping those in need.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Der Mut zur Tat. The Courage to act.

_They deserved to die._  
It was what they had taught him, again and again. They were a threat to all noblemen, he was told. A threat to everything right and true. A threat to a system which God had created. A system of those favored by Him and of those who weren’t.  
It was true; they were a threat. He had learned this first-hand. He had watched as some people of importance which he had met once or twice at a ball were brought to the guillotine. He hadn’t been able to avert his eyes as they kneeled in front of this monster. As their heads were cut off in just a fraction of a second. Their blood had been everywhere. Such cruelty was normal now, sometimes it was the rebels who suffered losses, sometimes the rich and powerful. Both sides murdered and were murdered.  
His parents - or rather the people who had replaced them - kept telling him that it was right to fight back, to murder each and every traitor. But was every single one of their ideas as bad as everyone said? Surely they must have a reason to hate the rich, mustn’t they? But from an early age, he had been taught to keep his mouth shut, to never express his doubts. If his adoptive parents said that the rebels were wrong and deserved death, he was supposed to accept it like it was law.  
But were they really right? Could they, who claimed to have been chosen by some God, really be better than those who were oppressed by them for centuries? Caught in a system based on violence and the absence of equality? Finally freeing themselves, yearning for a life like the one every nobleman had had, did they not have the rights to fight back? The doubt was eating him from the inside out. There was no one he could talk to - if he wanted to express what was really on his mind.  
He wondered how his real parents would think; he didn’t know whether they had been nobles, like the ones who had shown mercy and adopted him when he was merely an infant, or if they had actually been poor, simply not able to keep him alive on their own, like those rebels that threatened his family - and him.  
Sometimes, he lost himself in a fantasy. He imagined what his parents would have been like; he liked to believe that they wouldn’t tell him what to think, that he could doubt popular opinions. In his fantasy, his parents were kind and never scolded him for being himself - for feeling the way he did. He knew that this was just wishful thinking, that he would probably never meet his parents - if they even remembered him and were still alive - and that they would probably be no different from his adoptive family. If they were nobles, too, they would restrict his thinking and acting in the same way, it was just something all of them did, if they were poor, they would despise him for becoming a nobleman.  
He looked at the guillotine, knowing what would happen in a few minutes. The nobles treated each and every execution of rebels as a social event, comparable to a ball. It disgusted him. People were about to die - people who had mothers and fathers and husbands and wives and children and- and ideals. As opposed to the nobles, rich men and women who had never seen poverty, never experienced the struggle of the poor, never held a weapon, those people were fighting for what they believed in - and killed like their life wasn’t worth anything. In these times, the guillotine was a terrifying sight. No on knew who would be beheaded next, if it would be a rebel whose name no one would remember in a day or two, or a nobleman who would be mourned for weeks, months even. He kept wondering if the rebels they would kill today were actually as important as everyone said, or if they were just civilians who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time.  
Maybe he had witnessed his own parents' beheading once, not knowing who they were. Maybe they belonged to that huge number of faces he had seen at the public executions and forgotten. Like everyone else. These thoughts hurt him; he brushed them aside, but they always came back. Perhaps this was his curse, always being haunted by the uncertainty about his parents. His real parents. The parents that would have had no reason to treat him like he wasn’t their own, like he was worth less than them.  
"Wake up, it’s about to begin," his mother said harshly, ripping him out of his thoughts.  
"Yes, ma’am," he whispered, staring at the guillotine.  
They had a good view on the 'spectacle', as they called it. The only people who could see the events even better than them were the other rebels they had caught. It was a cruel punishment: first they were caught, probably tortured, and then they had to watch as their friends and allies lost their lives until it was their own turn. The last thing they saw was the crowd; some rebels and many, many noblemen. The ones they couldn’t manage to kill, but he was sure that they wanted to.  
One head off. Blood covering the stage.  
Another head off. More blood.  
Then another, and another, and another, and another.  
Six heads off, six people killed, six lives ended. Was it really right to murder people for expressing their own opinions? If it was, would he be killed, too, if a wrong word slipped out of him when he was forced to attend a social event like this? Or would they make an exception, simply because he was part of one of the most influential families in their country, because he was deemed better than those rebels?  
"It is time to leave," his father said. But he didn’t move, too caught up in his thoughts and doubts.  
"I said we are leaving now, _Finn_ ," he said again, this time touching his shoulder.  
To an outsider, this gesture didn’t look like much. But his father applied way too much pressure to his shoulder, making him worry that the bones would break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poe will appear in the next chapter - I promise.  
> I wonder if anyone will guess who adopted Finn. 
> 
> Fun Fact: So far (that is, with all the unpublished chapters) this is the longest fanfic I’ve ever written! Which is actually pathetic because...none of my other fics have high word counts.


	2. Handsome Stranger

There had been rumors about that weird man for a long time.   
He appears after dusk, they said. Wearing clothes that did not look like they belonged to a nobleman, yet were too expensive to belong to a poor man. Some believed that he was a soldier, perhaps one that had been wounded in battle and thus could not fight anymore. But nobody knew for sure, as he never talked.   
A man in dark clothing, walking the streets of the city, yet remaining anonymous. He never visited the rich parts, they said. He did, however, spend his time in the poorest, darkest districts, giving money to those in need. More money than they had ever seen in their lives, perhaps. Begging was not rewarded with riches.   
This was where the theory of him being a soldier did not do a well enough job at explaining. He had too much money for a simple soldier, he had to be a nobleman. A very strange nobleman. Which rich man would visit the poor, see their tragic lives, give them some of his money if he wasn’t forced to? The rich were too attached to their money and did not care about the poor, about those who had not been as lucky as them, who had not been born into a noble family. He could not be a nobleman like the others; he could not be a simple soldier. He was a strange man indeed.   
Frankly, Poe had never really believed the rumors and talks and theories. They were too strange, too unbelievable, they sounded like a story a mother would tell her children to comfort them when they were scared of the dark streets and the uncertain tomorrow. But he had also seen beggars get rich - in comparison to the others, at least - overnight. He had seen the happiness in their eyes. How they couldn’t believe their fate. It made him happy to see them finally being able to afford food, new clothes, perhaps a blanket to sleep on. Everything that was needed to live was way too expensive for most of them.  
But then he saw him.   
He was walking down the street, on his way from comforting one family that had lost a son, a brother, a husband, a father to the guillotine to another. It was what he did when he didn’t help catch nobles to execute with their own cruel machines. Weakening them. One after the other. Until they could reclaim their land; until they could make it a better place for those not favored by God, for those not blessed with a good name.   
The last family he had visited had a young child to feed, they did not know how, they could barely afford their own food. But soon, they had told him, almost glad about this terrible fact, soon he would be old enough to work. Children working in factories to support their families were a common sight. It hurt him to think about that, the memories of his own childhood came back, memories that he had tried to suppress. Painful memories.   
But a strange sight ripped him from his thoughts, made him stop in his tracks; the sight of the strange man he had heard so much and yet nothing about.   
He had not expected him to be so young and admittedly handsome, he had expected an old man, perhaps visibly changed by a war he knew all to well for it had never stopped, giving money to people in situations he remembered from his own past. Poe had never thought that the mysterious man would be a young nobleman he had seen at the executions which he had witnessed from a safe distance. A rich boy who had never experienced poverty, what it feels like to starve and freeze and worry about the next meal while sending your young child to work, knowing that it may not even return as the factories were not exactly safe places. He had known more children who died in those factories than he could - and wanted to - count.  
Just like Poe was told again and again, the stranger gave a beggar some money, a lot of money, smiling sadly, not saying a word. He felt like he had just seen a ghost, not a real man, not a nobleman next to a beggar - giving money to him. It was an unrealistic sight.   
"What are you doing here?“ he finally said, fully aware of the fact that he may sound too rude - and mentally slapping himself for it.   
The stranger froze, obviously shocked that someone dared to talk to him like that.   
Poe had not even expected an answer as he was aware of the stories of people this man had helped, saying that he would not even tell them his name.   
"I’m giving the money I don’t need to people who obviously need it."  
Astonishment filled him. Could a nobleman really think like this? Did rich people actually have hearts? Or was this man pretending to be better than the others so he would be spared when they finally got his family to experience the horror of the guillotine? Poe had learned one thing: You should never trust a person who seems to be as good as him. People like this almost always had a dark side. It seemed like a rule of nature.   
"Why would someone of your status even think about doing such a _noble_ action? Aren’t you busy admiring your money all day?"  
The other man looked almost ashamed, to Poe's surprise. Ashamed and...sad? He did not understand, he had always been so sure that every member of a noble family was happy - because in his world, money and food and a home and safety meant happiness.  
"I’m not a part of the family that raised me," the stranger said before vanishing into the dark, unlit streets of this divided city.


End file.
